Server configuration

You will need a DHCP server to setup networking, as well as a TFTP server to transfer the boot image (a requirement of all PXE option roms). Unlike PXE which is designed for quick-and-dirty/temporary setups to boot installation media, here you're actually doing a network installation, which is more-permanent, and thus calls for doing things properly.

Note: Change /mnt/arch/boot to /mnt/boot if you're going to use NBD, because you'll be unable to mount your root filesystem while in use

Start xinetd.

# systemctl start xinetd

Or if you're using systemd,

# rc.d xinitd start

Network storage

The primary difference between using NFS and NBD is while with both you can in fact have multiple clients using the same installation, with NBD (by the nature of manipulating a filesystem directly) you'll need to use the copyonwrite mode to do so, which ends up discarding all writes on client disconnected. In some situations however, this might be highly desirable.

We also created the pxelinux.cfg directory, which is where pxelinux searches for configuration files by default. Because we don't want to discriminate between different host MACs, we then create the default configuration.

Note: You will need to change nbd_host and/or nfsroot, respectively, to match your network configuration (the address of the NFS/NBD server)

The pxelinux configuration syntax identical to syslinux; refer to the upstream documentation for more information.

The kernel and initramfs will be transferred via TFTP, so the paths to those are going to be relative to the TFTP root. Otherwise, the root filesystem is going to be the NFS mount itself, so those are relative to the root of the NFS server.

Client boot

NBD

If you're using NBD, you'll need to umount the arch.img before/while you boot your client.

This makes things particularly interesting when it comes to kernel updates. You can't have your client filesystem mounted while you're booting a client, but that also means you need to use a kernel separate from your client filesystem in order to build it.

Note: To update the kernel in this setup, you either need to mount /mnt/boot using NFS in fstab on the client (prior to doing the kernel update) or mount your client filesystem after the client has disconnected from NBD